Follow the adventures of me, QuiltmakerB, as I continue to raise my nearly adult children, help run the family farm, and begin my new online business, Alpaca Flats, LLC.
Thursday, September 1, 2011
From the Garden
Today I harvested the first real bounty that I've had in years from my garden! The soil here at the Flats is very hard with clay and there is rock only a few inches below the surface of the ground. This is what made us the Great Black Swamp not so many years past. Not very conducive to gardening! This year I experimented with inexpensive, store-bought square foot gardens, adding new garden soil and compost from the alpacas. Most of the plants in the garden this year were volunteer plants from the compost heap; some strange new form of decorative gourds that I purchased last fall from the local grocery store, a lovely hybrid of tomato that is a combination of Roma and cherry tomatoes, and a couple of cantaloupe plants. During the very dry conditions in June, I ran a soak-er hose out to my boxes. The vines and plants have gone WILD! I have dozens of gourds coming along and enough tomatoes to eat every day. There are a half dozen cantaloupe hanging on the vines and the lavender and lemon balm is thriving! This fall when I clean up the gardens, I will build more permanent boxes and use the pieces from the old to make a new compost heap.
Labels:
Garden
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